Sanity
by Gus The Moose
Summary: Season six premier House crossover with Life. House and his roommate have a conversation in the middle of the night about sanity.


**Author's Note:** For some reason when I saw the House season six premiere I got this weird mental image of Charlie Crews in the mental hospital with him. If anyone could be confused for a mental patient it's Charlie. I ended up writing this because the idea just wouldn't leave me alone.

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><p>It was raining. Charlie leaned back against the wall of his room, looked out the window and counted every little drop as they tapped-tapped-tapped against the glass. He had his knees drawn up to his chest with his arms resting around them, his fingers laced together to hold them there. Like prison, Mayfield is never quiet even in the middle of the night. He can hear the other patients stretched along the hallway in little rooms of their own dealing with their own demons.<p>

He wasn't. This place and its well meaning doctors only wanted to help him, but there were guards and there were locks. It was prison with a slightly nicer attitude. Charlie couldn't remember how he got here; he just knew that he was once again inside. This time there was a distinct possibility he deserved it. He was not mentally stable anymore but at least he wasn't alone.

His roommate was awake too with his arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling with a grimace. His cane was propped against the side of his bed. His roommate didn't sleep well without pain medication and they didn't hand that out easily in this place. They both suffered more at night.

Charlie thought it was odd they had placed him with a man who had a cane. They had to know about his history. They had to know he would glance at that and think of what he could do with it, all the dangerous, deadly things he could make with a cane. He didn't like thinking those things, though he thinks about them all the time. He's a convict in a metal institution that doesn't deal with violent types like him. He could tear this place apart with one of the dinner trays or the art supplies or even one of the doctor's pens.

He sighed softly and caught the attention of his roommate.

"You never talk in group," he said.

Charlie looked away from the window and tilted his head. He talked constantly in group therapy. He interrupted other patients, doctors, he even interrupted himself. Not talking was a strange claim for his roommate to make. His roommate was the one who didn't talk, except for sarcastic and often cruel comments. There was a viciousness in his roommate that Charlie didn't like, but recognized.

"You ramble." His roommate emphasizes the word. "But you never say anything. It drives the doctors' nuts."

"I know," Charlie said. He and his roommate rarely talk. The time they're forced to be in the same space together, Charlie retreats into his own mind and Zen exercises. His roommate doesn't seem to mind anyway. He didn't have anything against the man, he just didn't want to talk.

"You have the biggest problem out of all of them. They talk about what's wrong with them and the ones that don't usually can't or are so paranoid they think we're all government spies…"

"You could be. You worked for the CIA."

His roommate glanced at him, still frowning. "You believe that?"

He shrugged, "I know the truth when I hear it."

They lapsed into silence and Charlie went back to counting raindrops, trying to be each one as it hit the window and then shattered into hundreds of other drops, forming and reforming with others that had fallen before it. He wanted to learn how to pull the pieces of who he had been back together.

"How do you survive this place?" his roommate asked at barely a whisper. "How do you stay sane in insane places?"

Charlie closed his eyes, his throat tight. Zen exercises popped into his mind, hundreds of sayings from the great masters and the Buddha himself. It was all there, cluttered up in a mind that he wanted to be clear. There really was only one way to be clear.

"You don't."

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><p>Charlie surfaced from the nightmare-dream with a small gasp. He got out of bed and silently moved through the empty halls of his house on bare feet. Even the high ceilings and endless walls were too much for him. Breathing through tightly clenched teeth he stalked out the backdoor and stood at the edge of the pool.<p>

None of it had been real, just a product of his subconscious. The place, the walls, even the people were all just figments in his mind. He was out of prison, he was free but he wasn't. There was no way to be sane in insane places and for him there was no way to be sane even in sane places. He couldn't be free of what existed only in his mind.

Charlie turned his face up into the rain and counted drops while counting tears.


End file.
